Connecting La Crosse with ORA Trails’ Jed Olson

Jed Olson, executive director of ORA Trails, in the WIZM studio Tuesday for La Crosse Talk PM discussing how his nonprofit is helping lead the way to connecting La Crosse through big and bigger projects all over the county.

La Crosse Talk PM airs weekdays at 5:06 p.m. Listen on the WIZM app, online here, or on 92.3 FM / 1410 AM / 106.7 FM (north of Onalaska). Find all the podcasts here or subscribe to La Crosse Talk PM wherever you get your podcasts.

Started the show a little backwards, talking about how ORA survives, because everything they’re working on is open and free to the public, plus a quick overview of a couple of things they’re overseeing — like the Bud Hendrickson Trail and and the Shelby Trail Farm. 

Then we got into (7:45) a bit of the history of the organization and some of the day-to-day things they do like maintaining Hixon Forest and trainings they hold to do some of that work — like this weekend’s chainsaw training.

After that,we began getting into (14:50) how ORA is trying to “connect the dots” in the county, including the The Bluffland Traverse project, which we get into some more later in the show.

Second half of the show (21:15), we got into the two big projects led first by the West Salem Bike Playground, which is about 80% funded and hoping to be ready by fall, and then we spent more time on connecting north and south La Crosse County (32:00) through the Bluffland Traverse project.